Also, I have a floppy disk I can boot, and It's booting system with finder 6.0.8, but I can't install the OS with just only one diskette (system6 usually needs 4 800k or 2 1.4m diskettes).

How can I get an OS working?

First, i tried to format Macintosh 800k floppies on my PC... (Yeah, I have nobody who have an Old mac around) I got .sea.bin images, uncompressed it and put the image to my floppy with dd (dd is command-line utility for Unix, that allows to copy data from and to any media), but everything I did was unbootable on Mac. Some websites says it's impossible to format macintosh 800k floppy on PC because PC's floppy dirve is different.

Second, I got an Vmac emulator. I created 1gb hfs image, attacched it to Vmac and successfully installed an OS to the virtual hard drive.

Can I just put that image to the REAL scsi hard drive and try to boot my Macintosh Plus with it?

1) I have two 50-pin centronics on the backside of my hard drive case.
2) HDD interface is 50-pin scsi and it looks like that http://www.ixbt.com/storage/images/rodime/rodime-hdd.jpg
3) It connects to the mac thru the 25-pin port
4) The hard disk is RODIME (Scotland-made?) I have no idea about the capacity
5) I have a red LED indicates disk read\write access on it. When it's connected to the plus and my Macintosh computer asking for media to boot ([?] blinks on screen), the HDD's LED is blinking too!
6) Mac don't boots up with HDD. After I give him the floppy to boot, it loads just the finder 6.0.8. No any apps available, no way to install the OS and no way to browse hdd's file system.

Any ideas? (SCSI or HD 20 ?)

Also, I'll get my adaptec PCI scsi controller for mac\pc soon. Can i just copy an image of hdd with os installed to my scsi cheetah hard drive and try it to boot up?

hm, sorry I am not so knowledged about PC - have a look here
(update: the following description if only for 1,4 MB Disks, no way for use on a MacPlus 800k. But if someone need to install a System6 on a MacSE, here you go:

How can I get an OS on a Mac using only my PC and 1,4 MB Disks? from macfaq.org

It's reasonably common that someone gets an old used Mac and it has no operating system on it. Often, these people don't have anything other than a PC to access the Internet. As long as your Mac is an SE FDHD or Mac IIx or higher, you can use these directions compiled by Alex Harrington (aka "fastkeys") to get that Mac up and running. Due to irreconcilable physical differences in the floppy drives of PCs and Macs, a Mac 128, 512, Plus, original SE, or un-upgraded II cannot use this procedure. If you have one of these, you'll need to get a Mac that can read PC floppies or find someone willing to make floppies for you.

You'll need your PC (running Win 9x or NT), some error-free 1.4MB floppies, and a good deal of patience. Download the following:

Once you have everything, install Stuffit Expander, unstuff the disk image to a new folder on your hard disk, and name the folder something short, like "Mac." Copy the RAWRITE program into this same folder. Rename the image file to image.img. Start your MS-DOS Prompt and type the following:

* Type c: (or whatever your drive letter with the Mac OS image file is)
* Press Return or Enter.
* Type cd\path\to\where\you\unstuffed
* Press Return or Enter. You should see a prompt something like this c:\mac>.
* Type rawrite
* This will execute the RAWRITE program. You should see this:

RaWrite 1.3 - Write disk file to raw floppy diskette

Enter source file name:

* Type image.img
* Press Return or Enter.
* It will then ask which drive you wish to write. Insert a blank floppy in your floppy disk drive.
* Type a: (If your floppy is a different letter, substitute that letter.)
* Press Return or Enter.
* Press Return or Enter again.
* The disk should now be written. This may take some time. It can be quite noisy on some floppy drives but this is normal.
* If all goes well, rawrite will finish and return you to the DOS prompt.
* Close the DOS window.
* Remove the floppy disk from the drive.
* Place the new bootdisk in your Mac's floppy drive and power it up. The Mac should boot from the floppy.
* Use the Apple HD SC utility on the boot disk to re-initialise your hard disk, if present.
* When the formatting program completes, quit it and drag the contents of the floppy onto the hard disk.
* Open the System Folder on the HDD and then close it again to "bless" it.
* Go to: Special -> Restart
* The boot disk should eject and the machine should restart from the HDD.

Landon Fuller notes the following:

On *nix systems, you can [you need to, in most cases] remove the header from uncompressed disk images by skipping the first 84 bytes of the image when writing it to disk.

On Linux:

dd if=imagefile.image of=/dev/fd0 bs=84 skip=1

In order to get the image file, use Aladdin Stuffit Expander for Linux (runs on most x86 unices with Linux binary emulation). Operate on the data fork, not the resource fork.

--------_________________MacOS aka Oliver

Last edited by MacOS on Tue Nov 23, 2010 2:41 pm; edited 2 times in total

I have a bunch of old ATARI Disks, that I can format on a MacPlus here, I add (english) System 6 on it (all 4 disks) + my favorite applications and send them to you, think its the most easiest way to get it done quickly.

I have a bunch of old ATARI Disks, that I can format on a MacPlus here, I add (english) System 6 on it (all 4 disks) + my favorite applications and send them to you, think its the most easiest way to get it done quickly.

Please send me your address as a privat massage or via mail (contact on the index page of myoldmac.net).

IT SHOULD BE AWESOME!!!

Thank you so much for your help... Youre looks like a very nice person =)
If you have a paypal account, I can pay you for shipping =3

But first... I'll try to copy my Vmac hard drive image to real scsi drive and boot it up... I need just to get my SCSI controller from Ebay) Next two weeks I think.

No unfortunately the SE is on 800K (there was a later model branded HD something something) with the 1.4Mg drive, but I have the original SE, and pretty much non-functional at this stage. It does boot, I can format a floppy, but that is about it. Very very frustrating not be able to go any further.

I have tried all the tricks with DD on OSX, with all kind of floppies, no luck. I need a 800K floppy drive to have any chance and I cannot locate anybody who has old kit who could help me.

Should Dinobot not re-appear, would it be OK to send you a set of floppies and cash to cover the postage costs? Can you duplicate your System 6 disks?

On a tangent, you would not happen to know where I can find System 6 user guide in electronic format, would you?

I'm in a little trouble. The set of 800k mac floppies, Oliver sent me like 1,5 mounth ago was not ever show up to me... I have no idea why =(

Probably my post service lost it, but it never lost my packages before. I always got all my international packages in time (like ebay).

Now I got 30gb SCSI hdd and it works fine. Also I have PCI scsi controller in my PC and windows (and linux too). Do you have any idea, guys, how can i put my hdd image I use with Vmac to the hard drive to make my Plus boot up?